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Sweet spray opens termites up for attack

INSTEAD of using toxic pesticides to control the termites that destroy valuable crops and infest buildings, farmers might like to try glucose. In a modified form, the sugar switches off termite immune systems making them vulnerable to fungal attack.

Unlike mammal immune systems which sense pathogens and make antibodies on the fly, termites produce proteins that break apart any harmful molecules. They then build these proteins into the walls of their nests creating a “super-organism immune system”, says Mark Bulmer at Towson University in Maryland.

He and his colleagues found a way to disable this system using a modified version …